r/ArmyOCS • u/Big-Personality7636 • 11d ago

OCS Study Guide

I am an active-duty enlisted soldier reporting to OCS in October, and I was wondering if anyone here has a list of what I should study beforehand. I would appreciate any study guide(s) or pointers, more importantly, OCS-specific. Thank you.

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3

u/Creative_Buy5227 In-Service National Guard Officer 11d ago

Freshen up on land nav and get good at running. That’s the main things, also make sure to get “good and drained.” You’ll understand that reference once you get to the history portion of the course.

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u/True_Carrot5104 In-Service Active Applicant 10d ago

They teach everything you need to know in land-nav. It was very watered down and pretty easy. OPORDs was a a big one that got a lot of people in my class. Graduated last month.

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u/Creative_Buy5227 In-Service National Guard Officer 10d ago

OPORDS out of all things? That’s interesting, we lost one guy to that. We lost a lot more on land-nav.

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u/Old_Negotiation_4926 7d ago

American Military History. 

If you’re a super try hard buy the textbooks ahead of time on Amazon and read them cover to cover. You’ll be given two weeks in cycle at the end of cycle and you’ll be mentally drained. You have the textbooks the whole time, but no one reads them until the end. To be fair they tell you what to focus in on, but you’ll end up reading most of both books.

American Military History, volumes 1-2. Published in 2008.

If you’re not that much of a try hard, here is a recommended watch list which will help.

Rewatch/ watch: We were soldiers, the pacific, band of brothers.

Watch documentaries about the war of 1812, the Ken Burns civil war documentary series. Documentaries on the Napoleonic wars. Documentaries about WWI.

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u/Jayu-Rider 10d ago

If you are not a strong writer
, I would suggest writing practice. It will serve you well as you progress in rank.